Black superheroes take flight in Hollywood

Look -- up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a black superhero!

No, seriously.

Actually, there’s a slew of them primed to infiltrate Hollywood’s white comic-book movie universe, and their inclusion is overdue says Richard Douglas Jones, one of the co-hosts of the podcast Black Nerd Power.

“There’s definitely an excitement and very much the sentiment that it’s about time,” Jones says about recent casting decisions in new and upcoming comic-book films, including the less-than-fantastic Fantastic Four, which stars Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm aka the The Human Torch. “Seeing black superheroes, particularly in the Marvel universe, has been refreshing, but at the same time, it’s still not enough.”

But, it is a start.

Anthony Mackie makes a brief-but-important cameo in Ant-Man as Falcon, who's been in three Marvel films so far and appears next in Captain America: Civil War, along with Don Cheadle as War Machine and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Black Panther, slated for 2018, stars Chadwick Boseman (also co-starring in Civil War) as the title character, the king of an African nation. Alexandra Shipp takes on Storm in X-Men: Apocalypse, scheduled for next spring. And, Will Smith, like Jordan, has taken on a traditionally white character with his role as Batman super-villain-turned-antihero Deadshot in DC Comics’ highly anticipated Suicide Squad, due next year.

They’re certainly not the first black superheroes in major movies -- Smith as Hancock, Wesley Snipes as Blade, Halle Berry as both Storm in X-Men and Catwoman, Michael Jai White as Spawn and Idris Elba as Thor’s Heimdall -- but there is significance in this relative abundance and prominence of black fantasy figures during geekdom’s current pop culture reign.

"Demographics are changing and the idea that the mainstream American audience is this white audience is over," says BirthMoviesDeath.com’s Devin Faraci. "It’s taken a very long time for the media companies to understand this." However, Hollywood's  injection of inclusivity has less to do with racial enlightenment and more to do with finances, he adds.

“The reality is that this kind of social justice change is being motivated 100% by money. The studios look at who’s going to the movies and they want to make those people come to more movies. I’m not going to complain that there’s a more capitalist reason for things getting more diverse, I’m just happy things are getting more diverse.”

The Hollywood Diversity Report by UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies released earlier this year found that “films with relatively diverse casts enjoyed the highest median global box office receipts and the highest media return on investment.” And yet, across the top 100 films of 2014, more than 73% of characters were white and in 17 of those movies, there was not a single black character with a speaking part, according to a report from the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California.

So, why is there such a disconnect? Bad data is partly to blame, says Faraci.

“We’re seeing a world where the Chinese box office is probably going to overtake the American box office in terms of importance, so everybody’s looking at that and then they’re looking at their old data from the ‘80s and the ‘90s that says movies with black leads don’t travel,” he explains. “So, they stopped making movies with black leads, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. I really don’t believe these guys are sitting around and saying, ‘Well, we can’t have a black guy as the hero.’ They’re saying, our data, which is outdated, is informed by this ingrained racism that we don’t even realize we have, and tells us that these films won’t travel. Superhero movies are showing how wrong that is, because they have such international appeal."

There is also a reluctance by whites in the nerd community to use their imaginations and see comic book, science fiction and fantasy characters with anything but white skin, says Jones.

“Once they announced that Johnny Storm was going to be a black man, I immediately knew there was going to be backlash,” he says. “White people who are used to seeing white faces and who live in white worlds, you throw in a splash of color every once in a while, that’s fine, but as long as those splashes of color stay in their lane, they’re OK with it. Once they get out of their comfort zone, all hell breaks loose. Make a black hobbit, and it’s the end of the freaking world.”

Yet, Hollywood’s tendency to whitewash nonwhite comic and fantasy characters is seen as acceptable, he says.

“There have been plenty of cases where characters that (are specifically nonwhite) have been portrayed by white actors. Liam Neeson’s character, Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins, is supposed to be Arab, but nobody said a thing.”

Jones adds that Hollywood missed an opportunity to launch a new franchise with a nonwhite face with the recent decision to reboot the Spider-Man film franchise with longtime character Peter Parker rather than new Spider-Man comic-book creation Miles Morales, who is black and hispanic.

“That was very disappointing, especially considering that in the mainstream Marvel universe, Miles Morales has been picked to be the main Spider-Man. It makes perfect sense to coincide with the launching of the new book to have that new Spider-Man. Marvel Comics most definitely missed the mark,” he says. “What it seems like they’re trying to do is hang onto the old Spider-Man story and draw people in based on familiarity, instead of stepping out on faith, as it were, and creating new stories around that new Spider-Man. They’re hoping  nostalgia brings people to the box office versus innovation.”

Dismissing diversity in favor of dollars won’t be the norm forever, predicts Brandon Easton, a staff writer on Marvel’s ABC series Agent Carter.

“What’s going to happen is over the next 10 years, you’re going to get a generation of kids who only know Miles Morales, and I think that’s really important,” he says. “There’s kids that are going to look at Peter Parker like some old man.”

And, in turn, young comic book fans of color willbe able to see themselves in  the characters they love -- unlike Easton’s generation.

“Just having people like Chadwick and Will Smith and all the other folks putting these movies out and starring in these films, it’s only proving that (young fans) don’t have limitations. They can dream big and they can write stories with black characters, with black superheroes, with black space empires. They no longer have to feel bad about it.”